National Security: As Iran tests its latest long-range missiles, a senator says a Pentagon study shows the White House's decision to let Moscow have a veto on missile defense has left us with systems that are "simply not credible."

When President Obama scrapped, at Russian insistence, President George W. Bush's plans for a European-based missile defense to protect America and Europe against the Iranian nuclear missile threat, he said it was because he had a better idea with better systems.

But portions of a forthcoming study by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, disclosed during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., says the Obama plan, employing what's called a phased-adaptive approach, won't work.

"Phased-adaptive approach," government speak for "making it up as we go along while we kick the can down the road," is a four-phase plan that calls for using three versions of the Navy's Standard SM-3 interceptor missile that's the foundation of its Aegis missile defense.

Phase four consists of a missile still on the drawing boards, a version of the SM-3 called the Block IIB. It would strike hostile missiles in the "early intercept" phase before the missile could release warheads and decoys.